Leadership Skills in Non-Leadership Roles by Dennis Padiernos
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•54 views
The document discusses leadership skills that can be developed even in non-leadership roles. It argues that leadership skills are actionable and can be improved through practice, unlike inherent traits. Some key leadership skills mentioned include decisiveness, relationship building, problem-solving, communication, and awareness. The document provides examples of demonstrating these skills in team situations, such as handling a mistake made by a teammate, teaching a teammate who needs additional help, and taking charge during an outage when the team lead is absent. It concludes by providing additional resources on leadership skills and traits.
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Leadership Skills in Non-Leadership Roles by Dennis Padiernos
Similar to Leadership Skills in Non-Leadership Roles by Dennis Padiernos (20)
More from Support Driven
More from Support Driven (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Leadership Skills in Non-Leadership Roles by Dennis Padiernos
- 1. Leadership Skills in Non-Leadership Roles Becoming a Better Teammate
- 3. Leaders are born, not made! Now what?
- 5. Let me tell you a story.
- 7. I’m not a leader, why Leadership Skills ?
- 9. YES!
- 10. Leadership Skill vs Leadership Traits Trait: - Something you do without thinking - Like being left-handed - Natural tendencies Skill: - Requires conscious effort - Worked on and practiced
- 11. Traits - Mental stamina - Confidence - Emotional stability - Charisma - Intuitiveness - … any many more.
- 13. Leadership Skills - Decisiveness - Truthful/Integrity - Relationship Building - Problem-solving - Teaching/Mentoring - Communication - Awareness/Situational Insight - Innovation
- 16. You found a teammate's mistake. You pull them aside and talk to them about that mistake in private. - Decisiveness - Truthful/Integrity - Relationship Building - Problem-solving - Teaching/Mentoring - Communication - Awareness/Situational Insight - Innovation
- 18. A teammate found your mistake and brought it to your attention. You listen and admit to the mistake and work with your teammate to help you prevent it in the future. - Decisiveness - Truthful/Integrity - Relationship Building - Problem-solving - Teaching/Mentoring - Communication - Awareness/Situational Insight - Innovation
- 20. A teammate asks you about something they should already know. You don't hesitate to go over the subject matter one more time. - Decisiveness - Truthful/Integrity - Relationship Building - Problem-solving - Teaching/Mentoring - Communication - Awareness/Situational Insight - Innovation
- 22. An outage happens while your team lead is out. You help your team get organized to handle it and helped identify pain points so that your team can go over them to create policies to address them. - Decisiveness - Truthful/Integrity - Relationship Building - Problem-solving - Teaching/Mentoring - Communication - Awareness/Situational Insight - Innovation
- 24. You and a teammate had started arguing about an incident and you realize you were at fault during the argument. You interrupt your teammate and apologize and admit to your mistake. - Decisiveness - Truthful/Integrity - Relationship Building - Problem-solving - Teaching/Mentoring - Communication - Awareness/Situational Insight - Innovation
- 26. Resources: ● Similar article: https://url.netlify.com/rkZo9MUbB ● GET RESOURCE FOR LEADERSHIP SKILLS: specially some of the skipped skills. ○ https://url.netlify.com/BJP65MLbS ○ https://url.netlify.com/Sy2C9fUWr ○ https://url.netlify.com/By4xifLWS ● GET RESOURCE FOR LEADERSHIP TRAITS: ○ https://url.netlify.com/rkA4sfIbB ○ https://url.netlify.com/SyEUjG8-H ● Banner image: https://url.netlify.com/Sk9dsMI-B
Editor's Notes
- Some say that leaders are born not made -- I don’t agree. I’ve never seen babies lead teams before. Some people are more naturally able to assume a position of leadership. I’m definitely not one of those people. I was shy and introverted. I was voted 2nd most quiet 1st grader. See? I couldn’t even take the lead then. Ask anyone I know and they’ll tell you. Actually, they won’t. I’m no longer quiet or shy. I’m still an introvert though. But, before I forget the whole point of this thing is: despite not starting out with leadership qualities, I or anyone else, can become fit to be a leader or show leadership qualities. This preconception that only leaders have leadership skills can contribute to feelings of never living up to expectations. That we are somehow ‘not enough’. This sounds an awful lot like Imposter Syndrome, doesn’t it?
- I've always told people I'm not much of a leader. But my boss seems to think I am. So I went on a soul-searching trip. Is developing leadership skills important for someone who is not in a leadership role? Or someone who wants to be? Or more importantly, someone who doesn't want to be?
- Let me tell you a story...
- A year ago, I started a new job and my new boss scheduled a weekly pairing with me. This completely stressed me out, and not wanting to come empty-handed on the first of these pairing, I came up with a list of support tickets that I felt I made mistakes on or needed help with. When I brought up my list, my boss promptly told me our pairing was my time. It was about me. Here was someone who is a leader of the whole support team and he was giving me the mic. I ended up telling him about my feelings of ‘not good enough’ and ‘the need to continuously be better’. In each subsequent pairing, I was starting to feel better about my knowledge and performance. I also started sharing actionable items that I thought of to address any concerns I had.
- Recently, I realized what he had done was allow me to practice my leadership skills during those pairings. He provided opportunities for me to figure out things I could improve in myself and figure out solutions to strengthen those areas. He would ask ‘innocent’ questions like ‘how did the outage go?’ and get my gears going on what went well and what could be improved. And then he charged me with implementing my ideas. Before I know it, I had migrated our status page over to Statuspage.io and had a complete Pagerduty workflow. He demonstrated great relationship building skills during these pairings. Mentoring me and helping me improve skills by guiding me instead of dictating what I should do. Innovating by managing our team in unique personally-tailored ways rather than codifying ‘one size fits all’ approach. He nurtured each of his members’ individual qualities. I started realizing that I actually do have some of these skills: Problem-solving, Situational Awareness, Communication and the thing my boss and I do during pairings and my personal favorite — Developing Leadership Skills. Yes. That’s a leadership skill too. How meta. Skill-ception, in fact. So short story long (his favorite saying), he taught his team to be more like leaders (teach a person to fish) instead of just people who follow by rote (give a person a fish).
- At that point, you probably have questions: What makes a leader a leader? Leadership traits? Leadership skills? Which is more important? So many questions… the answer is….
- Leadership traits are natural tendencies. And tendencies are just that, things you tend to do without thinking about it. Like being left-handed. On the other hand (no pun intended), leadership skills are things you have worked on and practiced. Some traits can be a skill and vice versa. But the main difference is with skills, you need conscious effort. It boils down to talent vs hard work. The tortoise and the hare. Rock Lee vs Sasuke (for those familiar with Naruto). Now, why do we want to be a better teammate? Who cares what else does as long as we do our job? Sure, but actually, again — no. Better teamwork means a better work-life and a better work-life means a better life in general. Who doesn’t want that?
- Mental stamina, Confidence, Emotional stability, Charisma, Empathy and Intuitiveness are some common leadership traits. While you definitely see some of these traits in leaders and good teammates, they aren’t very ‘actionable’ in your work-life. How does one level up their charisma? Improving intuitiveness is not very intuit, is it?
- Leadership skills are actionable. As I mentioned in my little life story, leadership skills aren’t just for leaders. How did leaders get good at these skills, anyway? They didn’t all start out as leaders, amirite? They started out as teammates. And became really, really good teammates. A ‘first among equals’, if you will. Arthur and his knights of the round table. And if we keep going in that direction, we can say that each team member can be a leader of their own, each accountable for their portion of the team’s knowledge as SME (subject matter experts). You can break it down further and say that each team consists of multiple teams of one and each team member is a leader. Makes sense, right? Good, now, let’s go fishing. Leadership Skills can be developed with conscious effort and practice. These are the types of skills my boss was helping foster in each of us — these were the things he was teaching us how to fish for. And every one of these are qualities teammates value and crave in someone they work with and depend on.
- Decisiveness Making quick decisions with the information you have a good skill to have and is a sign of a good leader. And a good teammate. Not having to be told what to do in every situation allows your team leader and teammates to be able to depend on you. Trustworthiness/Integrity Trustworthiness/Integrity is being truthful or honesty or having a strong set of values that you really stand by. A teammate who is trustworthy is someone that can bring a team together and work out situations that can otherwise lead to misunderstanding. Relationship building (or team building) Leadership requires the ability to build and maintain a strong and collaborative team of individuals working toward the same goal. It is a leader’s role to encourage healthy working relationships between team members, clients, producers, other managers and the community at large. When employees trust each other and the business as a whole, the entire organization stands to benefit significantly. Problem-solving Basically, keep calm and create a step-by-step solution (this should be a t-shirt). Problem-solving skills a teammate create a plan of action with their team and external teams alike that helps keep projects on track or a particular situation under control. Ability to teach and mentor Effectively teaching colleagues or direct reports how to grow in their careers helps your team scale. It requires your to think less about yourself and more about how to help your teammates and team as a whole be successful. Communication Communicating means you are able to help teammates understand what you currently situation is, whether you need help or can offer to help. Communication can help surface places of improvement that otherwise could be overlooked. Awareness/Situational Insight Another important skill is the ability to keep moving forward after a bad situation. Identifying ones own weaknesses and strengths without letting ego get in the way. And doing the same for others. Innovation To be creative and recognize when changes could improve the workflow. Similar to problem-solving, an innovative person can come up with new and effective ways of doing things. Where problem-solving is in response to a problem, innovation does not need to be. Developing Leadership Skills While some do undoubtedly contain a certain ability to connect with and inspire others without trying, leadership skills can also be nurtured and developed. Think ‘tortoise and the hare’.
- Phew! Lots to think about. Right?
- I sent out a survey with 5 scenarios in this game and pie-charted the results. I got 92 responses. Each table will be a group. I will present a scenario and the group will discuss which skill applies to it. Provide a short reason. I will choose 2 groups at random to go head-to-head. Group chooses a rep to present answer and reason. I reveal by saying “Survey says…”. Group keeps track of points. “Remember, there is no wrong answers. These results are the opinion of the 92 survey participants.”
- 0 Decisiveness 7 Truthful/Integrity 14 Relationship Building 2 Problem-solving 39 Teaching/Mentoring 21 Communication 17 Awareness/Situational Insight 0 Innovation
- 0 Decisiveness 32 Truthful/Integrity 13 Relationship Building 13 Problem-solving 10 Teaching/Mentoring 11 Communication 20 Awareness/Situational Insight 0 Innovation
- 2 Decisiveness 0 Truthful/Integrity 14 Relationship Building 2 Problem-solving 76 Teaching/Mentoring 5 Communication 0 Awareness/Situational Insight 0 Innovation
- 29 Decisiveness 0 Truthful/Integrity 46 Relationship Building 0 Problem-solving 1 Teaching/Mentoring 4 Communication 12 Awareness/Situational Insight 7 Innovation
- 0 Decisiveness 63 Truthful/Integrity 12 Relationship Building 1 Problem-solving 0 Teaching/Mentoring 4 Communication 19 Awareness/Situational Insight 0 Innovation